Upcycling : Wicked & Un-Wasted

I may have men­tioned this kittykat once or twice before and no mat­ter how I try, I simply can­not hide the big knit­ting needles that 25-year-old Joyce Wang is by far and bey­ond one of my favor­ite, freshest and tasti­est new design kids on the block.

The fact that she’s a bit kooky (“weird” is such an ugly word), only adds to our mutu­al like/​mixability.

现实中的她有点古灵精怪（kooky）（“古怪”（weird）是一个很丑陋的字眼，我不会拿来用），这也是我们互相吸引的地方。

Her mod­ish trav­ails and thoughts com­bined with a cer­tain self-con­fid­ence — which I for one did not pos­sess 8 years ago — may come off as pos­eur hubris to some, but I have yet to hear a pedantic word com­ing from her mouth. And believe you me, in this love­able-Poo Bah industry, “pedantic” is very much part of the ward­robe staples, nev­er to be under­stated. A fash­ion faux pas in dire need of some recyc­ling, if you ask me.

That being the case and left off the cat­walk, I prefer to see this tal­en­ted design­er as an afresh not-so-kinder-sur­prise who uses her latest line Upcyc­ling to take any dull, dowdy, mat­ri­arch gar­ment from time­worn to the cur­rent timeline. From mat­ron to mis­tress mater­i­al. And bey­ond.

Wang is no new­comer to the design­er game, hav­ing gradu­ated from the Guang­zhou Uni­ver­sity of Fine Arts, worked for Jack&Jones in Beijing and cur­rently cre­at­ing her third indi­vidu­al col­lec­tion in Shang­hai (slated for some good old-fash­ioned run­way show­ing off come April 2017).

Mov­ing from her ini­tial cubist-cubic-marble inspired Tran­scend gradu­ation col­lec­tion with its straight lines, severe shapes and con­struc­tions, into the (and I quote) “copy-pas­te” men­tal­ity of Jack&Jones (or any sim­il­ar large brand, for that mat­ter) proved no easy feat for our dame of the hour. “I think any high-end cooper­a­tion with fast fash­ion brands could bring the lat­ter some new ideas. Non­ethe­less, in the end, they [the fast brands] just copy one another. The reas­on I quit Jack&Jones is just that : Feel­ing the cre­ativ­ity being sucked out of me and basic­ally find­ing no sat­is­fac­tion in work­ing for a large brand. I quit and fol­lowed my own path. To suc­cess ? We’ll see, hee. At least I can pay my rent, eat and drink red wine for now.” stated Wang.

Her first per­son­al col­lec­tion as a full-fledged dress­maker (don’t take that word­ing too ser­i­ously, bit­te) was entitled “Dress me, Be you”. The sil­hou­ettes here fol­lowed the nat­ur­al flow of the body, how very feng shui, merely accen­tu­ated or boldly empowered by the occa­sion­al big graph­ic design — or light(some) col­or splash. As they say, the dress must fol­low the body of a woman, not the body fol­low­ing the shape of the dress. (Yes, Hubert de Givenchy.) This par­tic­u­lar col­lec­tion gained Wang the atten­tion of the lar­ger Shang­hai fash­ion fol­low­ing in mid-2015. Which brings us to today’s body of art­work : Upcyc­ling, cloth­ing from old to anew.

One 1960s/​70s super­mod­el-turned-fam­ous-act­ress once said “Fash­ion is what you’re offered four times a year by design­ers. And style is what you choose.” We con­cur, Miss Hut­ton. And if in the 2010s you can add some sus­tain­ab­il­ity to that style, even bet­ter. Upcyc­ling aims to reduce waste by recyc­ling old cloth­ing and giv­ing it a new hand­made life. Wheth­er Wang changes the shape, paints it, draws away or mixes dif­fer­ent mater­i­als ; the con­cept, time, effort and per­son­al involve­ment in her design pro­cess are what make the gar­ment renewed and unique.

It all starts with a draw­ing on one side of Wang’s work table…从 Wang 桌边的一张设计图开始…

“Basic­ally, I have a bunch of old clothes — given to me by friends or retrieved from the city’s ran­dom flea/​vintage mar­kets — lying around on the one side of my work­shop and on the oth­er side, you’ll find designs scattered across the draw­ing table. Then I just start to put the designs and these ‘unwanted gar­ments’ [‘unwanted’, such an ugly word] togeth­er and look which com­bin­a­tions make that per­fect fab­ric­ated [in every sense] fit.” A yet to be cat­walk-stomped con­cept, espe­cially in China. One oth­er example of such re-con­struc­tion design, is Gong Jiaqi, win­ner of sus­tain­able fash­ion advoc­at­ing Redress NOG’s Eco­Ch­ic Design Award back in 2012.

Obvi­ously, and even I the non-cre­at­ive get this, mater­i­als are key in Upcycling’s pro­cess. When asked about her favor­able fab­rics, one rolls off the tongue with­in a sow­ing machine stitch : “Den­im, I favor and adore it.” The material’s work­ab­il­ity in ref­er­ence to shap­ing, dye­ing and match­ing it, makes it dif­fi­cult to go wrong with ; you can­not wrong with it. Jeans really do rep­res­ent demo­cracy in fash­ion. Favor­ite Upcyc­ling den­im designs ? One knee-length den­im patch­work jack­et patch­work and a top incor­por­at­ing the den­im waist­band.

Pre-order ? “Yes, pre-order is the word for Upcyc­ling. It also con­tin­ues this whole con­cept of ‘not wast­ing’. If I don’t offer on-the-spot pro­duce, I don’t waste any­thing hee­hee. [In that same gal­leria of thought] I also don’t know that much about sus­tain­able fash­ion under­tak­ings in Shang­hai ; I mean, yea, I hear people talk­ing about it, but I haven’t seen any­thing yet. I did meet NEEMIC’s Hans Gal­liker, but he’s actu­ally a Beijinger.” Quote, Wang. Ha, true, he is ; but more on the fant­ast­ic sus­tain­able pre-order-wor­ship-able NEEM­IC here at a later date.

Speak­ing of sur­round­ings, all that sur­rounds us, influ­ences us on a day-to-day basis. For Wang, her latest inspir­a­tions come in the form of the Guizhou Province’s Buyi Minor­ity (布依族) who weave all their gar­ments by hand, usu­ally adorned with some basic pat­terns (checked or striped). It’s a minor­ity tra­di­tion which you can play with and turn into fash­ion, if you will. The 2016 col­lec­tion will fea­ture Upcyc­ling designs man­u­fac­tured in the Buyi hand­woven fab­rics. With a side of indigo-dye (you boil the plant to cre­ate the paint and dye the fab­rics or some­thing like that, I’m not good with flora — plants die). The pat­terns are in fact hand-cre­ated as well, twist­ing, turn­ing and sow­ing the fab­ric in such a way that the indigo’s white and blue col­or­ing cre­ates them very nat­ur­ally. Plus, nature’s paint lit­er­ally gets under your skin and bene­fits your health. TCM, babes.

Of course, “pat­terns” are merely scratch­ing a design’s sur­face. Wang goes ton-sur-ton with Upcyc­ling. Oth­er details that take the collection’s gar­ments from drab to fab (how very Daily­Mail of me) are the pock­ets and but­tons that allow for adjustable sizes. Not per se in regards to your weight, but in regards to your fash­ion plate (or palette) de la minute. The wear­er can cre­ate over­lap, over­size or a slim fit, or whatever else befits their dainty dab­bling in fash­ion that day. The design is in the details, non?

One detailed design­er Wang holds in Bruce-Weber-high regard is Alex­an­der Wang. Yet in her nor­mal Shang­hai lane-house life, she’s a fan of smal­ler brands com­ing up with ori­gin­als — and the likes of LaBoron. As far as her own brand goes, she main­tains tat people should buy a gar­ment because they like the whatever-ward­robe-item for itself. Not the label attached to it. Upcyc­ling doesn’t do labels and, well, fash­ion after all is an instant lan­guage (Miuc­cia), so let the gar­ment do the talk­ing.

Alex­an­der Wang 是 Wang 十分崇拜的设计师。生活在上海里弄里的她更青睐于一些原创设计的小众品牌，例如 LaBoron。在品牌发展的过程中，Wang 一直鼓励顾客去购买他们自己真正喜欢的服饰，而不是只看品牌。升级再造系列的服装就是没有任何标签的，毕竟时尚本身就是一种即时语言，还是让服饰自己来述说吧。
In sum, Wang believes that “fash­ion has the power to give you con­fid­ence. If I’m not dressed up, I just can­not work. And when people keep star­ing, you either look fab­ulous or hideous. I don’t think I’m that ugly SO I must be fab­ulous. I’m wink­ing now, please do write that down!” I for one am pretty con­vinced this little fash­ion fros­ted cup­cake knows what she wants her Upcyc­ling to stand for and is rolling in the very right dir­ec­tion with it — Beijing, Shang­hai, Glob­al ? No rest or waste for the wicked.